This day was supposed to be relaxing

I returned from New Orleans yesterday evening (I know, I should have mentioned more about that here, sorry) and life quickly returned to normal. There were kids to be disciplined and things to get done around the house. I was hoping that today would be a nice relaxing day, but that didn't quite go as planned. I was able to sleep in until around 10:00am, which was nice. I know that I should have gotten up for church, but I was super tired and woke up with a sore throat and bad cough, so it probably wouldn't have gone well.

Once I was up and about I got some breakfast and Ivy pretty much immediately asked to go outside. Once we brushed her teeth and hair we went outside to play for a while. She pretty much occupied herself, so I took the opportunity to climb up on the roof and fix the garage cupola. I put it back in place, but still don't have a good way to fix it without major work, so I climbed back down. The rest of the morning wasn't too bad, but when there are kids around, nothing can really be considered restful.

After lunch I had to fix our tire pump so that I could inflate the tires on the wheelbarrow and the tractor. Angela had done some pruning on Saturday and she didn't want to carry everything down to the brush pile by hand. It turns out that the switch on the compressor was bad, so I left it taken apart so that I can just make contact with the wires when I need it to run. The pump runs off of the car's cigarette lighter, so it's not like I'm dealing with a lot of voltage, so I figure it's safe.

Once the compressor was working again, I inflated the wheelbarrow's tire and got to work on the tractor. This isn't trivial, since I have to first remove the wheel weights in order to get to the tire stem. While I was working on that, I decided to go ahead and leave the car radio on to listen to the CD I had playing. After a little while I noticed that the music stopped, which quickly led to the realization that I killed the car battery. I tried jumping it, but that didn't work, so it was off to buy a new one. Once I got home I started working on putting it in and found that the bolt which holds it in place was rusted beyond belief. After much cursing, WD-40 and time, I was able to get it loose enough to get the battery out. I then put the new one in, but for some reason, the negative terminal connector wouldn't get tight enough to stay on with any amount of confidence, so I came up with a nice solution using some cable ties. I'm sure it will never pass inspection, but that's a problem for June, not March.

That was about it for the major problems of the day. All in all, it was actually a pretty productive day. The snow plow is put away for the summer, and the mower deck is on the tractor. I got the shed cleaned up a little and put out most of the patio furniture. I even considered starting on some gardening work, but it was soon going to be dinner time, and the twins were asking to play, too, so that will have to wait for next weekend.